Quote Originally Posted by downingracing View Post
I was right behind him when he went off. I was shocked not to see a FCY or worse at the end of the back straight. Glad he is going to be OK. Wish I had installed the camera... I remember seeing the hit and thinking "Holy !t !!"
To be honest, I was taken aback by the response to the incident. Ed told me the impact rang his chimes pretty good. A worker appeared and asked if he was ok. He said yeah I think so (which we all say)
The worker then said, OK, we're going to leave you there. And he left.
He was still in the car, in an impact zone, a bad impact zone. He didn't get assessed. Didn't get asked if he wanted to go to medical, nor was taken to medical.
Which really should have happened.
He got out by himself, crawled through the fence , and stood there the rest of the race.
When they came to pull him out, they pulled the car out, asked if it would start and when it did, they said, good...drive it in.
The coolant was about all gone from it and he had to drive it back to the paddock, not to mention he just went through a hard impact, one where he bounced his head off the rollcage.
I insisted that he get a card started. When he went to do that, the safety steward told him that he refused treatment at the scene.
He was never offered anything at the scene.
Not trying to start anything, but I do think the cheif of F&C should be aware of this so that they can correct that response before it bites them in the ass. I don't know if they had new staff on that station or what. In New England, that hit would have been an automatic trip to medical right away and the car would have been removed so no one else got into it.
The folks we dealt with were by and large wonderful, friendly, the track was awesome and the event (even with this) was great. This was the only major flaw that I found, and thank God it didn't turn out worse. I do plan to somehow let the region know that this happened and ask them to reassess their response to an impact like that.
And, one last note, I really want to thank the people who came to offer help after that, both physical and mental. At one point we had 6 people there saying they were willing to thrash on it and get it straight enough to run the next day. If he hadn't gotten hurt, we might have attempted it. I've seen it before, but I must say, we have the best group of racers on the planet!
Thanks everyone...